Language Is Ruled by Grammar

If you are a fantasy or science-fiction fan, you know that the language in today’s video games and television must be more than the alien gibberish of old. It must have complete structures that consistently make sense. So Hollywood hires “conlangers”—people who construct new languages with complete grammatical structures like those you see in the HBO series Game of Thrones’ Dothraki or Avatar’s Na’vi (Chozick, 2011).

As your third-grade teacher likely told you, grammar—the system of rules for creating words, phrases, and sentences in a particular language—is important. Although good grammar doesn’t always equal good communication, using correct grammar helps you communicate clearly. And pronunciation matters, too. For example, if you pronounce the word tomato “tommy-toe,” others probably won’t understand that you are referring to the red fruit that tastes really good on a hamburger. That’s because grammar has phonological rules governing how words should be pronounced.

Similarly, grammar has syntactic rules guiding the placement of words in a sentence. If you shuffle the words in the sentence “I ran to the store to buy some milk” to “Store I to milk to ran the buy some,” your meaning becomes unclear. Grammatical rules differ among languages. Native speakers of English, for example, must remember that the grammar of Romance languages (such as French and Spanish) requires a different syntax. For example, in English, adjectives typically precede a noun (“I have an intelligent dog”), whereas in Spanish, adjectives follow the noun (“Tengo un perro intelegente,” literally translated as “I have a dog intelligent”). To communicate clearly in Spanish, an English speaker must adjust.

Excellent grammar on its own will not automatically make you an outstanding communicator. Telling your professor in perfect English that her style of dress is a sorry flashback to the 1980s is still offensive and inappropriate. That’s because competent communicators also consider the situational, relational, and cultural contexts whenever they use language.